Okay, so I've had a little time to fool around with the alpha, mostly in dev mode. I hope somebody has gotten a working colony for you yet. Anyway here are my thoughts so far...
The drugs seem well implemented and balanced, although that's just an initial impression. Quick question, no hydroponic marijuana? The fermentation process for beer was a good addition. The tool tips probably need to be rewritten. It's hard for me to comment on how useful they are, since they're aimed at a new player. No matter what anyone says, disabling melee hunting was a good choice as was the FF reduction.
Increasing the work required to grow was a good idea, it focuses the game back on survival a bit and reduces the problem where players were bringing in absolutely massive harvests in a way that's balanced across biomes. Debuffing corn was a good idea, although it's hard to comment on balance because we don't have access to units per harvest info (unless I'm misunderstanding something, I've never quite figured out how nutrition value works unless it only applies to uncooked food). By the way, that would be good, and should probably be included in the crop info. There's a lot of stats in this game that are quite difficult to parse. For example I have been trying to figure out for a long time whether dairy is at all a viable option for colonies, but no one on the internet seems to know what "hunger rate" translates into.
Actually, when you hover over a potential crop choice relevant crop info should become visible. Also, I'm pretty sure this is an issue with this alpha, unless it's always been this way and I forget, but "rose and day lily" probably shouldn't be the first and second crop options ahead of potato, but placed with dandelions right before trees in the list.
The changes to agriculture make me realize that really growing should be a three step process, tilling, sowing, harvesting. And then I realize that's about to drift off into a suggestions thread (tractors? plow animals?).
The thing though is that I realize I'm probably not actually going to use drugs in my colony. It's just people have a tendency to roleplay "good", you start to kind of care about your colonists and not want them to be crack addicts. For instance, I find that of the colonies I've made, I just spend less time at the ice sheet one. I just like the cannibal engie, legendary constructor of human-leather armchairs, less than my party-throwing night-owl engie. Not that cannibalism, like drugs, doesn't add a lot of breadth to the game. My concern is just a lot of people won't actually use these new crops, even though they are balanced. Compare that to lets say the hypothetical ability to plant an orchard, that wouldn't add much to the systems, but it's something you'd see in every colony.
My other point, which I think some people have brought up, is that it does seem an odd focus right now. It's a well appreciated addition, but some changes to the core game should probably be a higher priority, such as improving the UI. I know this belongs in the suggestion thread, but please indulge my nattering.. (no way to quickly scan moods across the colony, no way to quickly figure out who is carrying which weapons, no way to get pets to easily stay when their master is drafted, no button to toggle colony-wide outfit change, no button to assign all pets to their bonded companions colony-wide, and no space-saving storage containers: mostly all available with mods that, when playing the new alpha, really remind you how much they're missed from the base game).
Finally, the fast pace of these alphas is really staggering, and it shows how much you as the developer are dedicated to this game and its players. With it out now on steam, even on early access, from the number of people concerned about backward compatibility, and the size of the modding community, maybe larger updates on a slower schedule might be a good idea.
But let me just say, this update, like the rest of this game, continues to impress.
The drugs seem well implemented and balanced, although that's just an initial impression. Quick question, no hydroponic marijuana? The fermentation process for beer was a good addition. The tool tips probably need to be rewritten. It's hard for me to comment on how useful they are, since they're aimed at a new player. No matter what anyone says, disabling melee hunting was a good choice as was the FF reduction.
Increasing the work required to grow was a good idea, it focuses the game back on survival a bit and reduces the problem where players were bringing in absolutely massive harvests in a way that's balanced across biomes. Debuffing corn was a good idea, although it's hard to comment on balance because we don't have access to units per harvest info (unless I'm misunderstanding something, I've never quite figured out how nutrition value works unless it only applies to uncooked food). By the way, that would be good, and should probably be included in the crop info. There's a lot of stats in this game that are quite difficult to parse. For example I have been trying to figure out for a long time whether dairy is at all a viable option for colonies, but no one on the internet seems to know what "hunger rate" translates into.
Actually, when you hover over a potential crop choice relevant crop info should become visible. Also, I'm pretty sure this is an issue with this alpha, unless it's always been this way and I forget, but "rose and day lily" probably shouldn't be the first and second crop options ahead of potato, but placed with dandelions right before trees in the list.
The changes to agriculture make me realize that really growing should be a three step process, tilling, sowing, harvesting. And then I realize that's about to drift off into a suggestions thread (tractors? plow animals?).
The thing though is that I realize I'm probably not actually going to use drugs in my colony. It's just people have a tendency to roleplay "good", you start to kind of care about your colonists and not want them to be crack addicts. For instance, I find that of the colonies I've made, I just spend less time at the ice sheet one. I just like the cannibal engie, legendary constructor of human-leather armchairs, less than my party-throwing night-owl engie. Not that cannibalism, like drugs, doesn't add a lot of breadth to the game. My concern is just a lot of people won't actually use these new crops, even though they are balanced. Compare that to lets say the hypothetical ability to plant an orchard, that wouldn't add much to the systems, but it's something you'd see in every colony.
My other point, which I think some people have brought up, is that it does seem an odd focus right now. It's a well appreciated addition, but some changes to the core game should probably be a higher priority, such as improving the UI. I know this belongs in the suggestion thread, but please indulge my nattering.. (no way to quickly scan moods across the colony, no way to quickly figure out who is carrying which weapons, no way to get pets to easily stay when their master is drafted, no button to toggle colony-wide outfit change, no button to assign all pets to their bonded companions colony-wide, and no space-saving storage containers: mostly all available with mods that, when playing the new alpha, really remind you how much they're missed from the base game).
Finally, the fast pace of these alphas is really staggering, and it shows how much you as the developer are dedicated to this game and its players. With it out now on steam, even on early access, from the number of people concerned about backward compatibility, and the size of the modding community, maybe larger updates on a slower schedule might be a good idea.
But let me just say, this update, like the rest of this game, continues to impress.